Web of Deceit (52 page)
But Morgan’s eyes, so like those of her father, were almost black in the flickering light and she seemed mocking, challenging and wise beyond her years. Myrddion could see her raised profile, so pregnant with messages
for the High King that he imagined he heard her response to Uther penetrate his brain.
Do not touch me or mine, or I will make you suffer for eternity.
Uther’s anger was palpable as he raised his wine cup, drank deeply, then rammed the goblet down on the table with sufficient force to bend the soft gold. Bishop Paulus jumped with fright, and watched his earthly master out of nervous, uncertain eyes.
The High King’s medusa stare moved to Gorlois’s most treasured possession, Queen Ygerne, who was speaking animatedly to Prince Luka about the need for noblewomen to better the lot of their servants and farmers. Luka had been dazzled by Ygerne at first and had been content to watch her smiling face, paying little attention to what she said. But her warmth, eagerness and intelligence had soon captured his attention, and he realised she was a woman of tenderness, as well as a creature of inexplicable glamour.
Uther laid eyes on Ygerne for the first time and saw the Dumnonii queen at her absolute best. Knowing that her husband was beset on all sides by the High King’s enmity and the passive acceptance of the situation by his peers, she had dressed with exceptional care. She understood that a soft, pale rose shade suited her admirably and had sacrificed a bolt of imported cloth from her dowry for the occasion, with underskirts of cream and pale dovegrey. Her dress was modest but the fragile, valuable cloth was light, revealing the slender beauty of her form and accentuating the whiteness of her throat as it rose out of the antique gems that formed a heavy collar of rubies and garnets at her neck.
Above this flower-coloured confection, her pale face captured every flicker of the lamplight, accentuating the changeable nature of her expression. Her high cheekbones were polished by the light, as were her broad forehead and delicate, narrow nose. She was too distant for Uther to see the true colour of her eyes, but he was sure that they were pale. Her mouth drew the High King’s eyes with its uncoloured, cosmetic-free
voluptuousness and seemed to drag his gaze towards the concealed swelling of her breasts.
Across that room of colour, laughter and raucous noise, Myrddion saw Uther bite his lip until the healer feared that blood could come gushing out. He followed the track of Uther’s stare and saw Ygerne, unconscious of the scrutiny of the High King’s pale eyes as she laughed at one of Luka’s jokes. She tossed her head in unconscious coquetry, and even beneath the gauzy rose veil her luxurious hair was trying to escape from her plaits. Corkscrews of curl softened the fine bones of her face, and even Myrddion wondered what it would feel like to loosen those bindings and set that long, wonderful hair free so he could bury his face in it.
Myrddion swivelled his gaze back to Uther.
‘Oh, Mother! No!’
The councillors and the magistrate stared at Myrddion, aghast at the words that had unconsciously burst from his mouth.
For under Uther’s fixed stare was the lust of a man who has kept his bodily desires under rigid control for decades. Unbidden, Ygerne had wakened something that had slept within the basic nature of the High King, something filled with longing and desire that had never been satisfied by any living woman. Perhaps it was a buried memory of a long dead mother. Perhaps it was the idealisation of womanhood treasured by a callow youth. But there, whatever its source, was a compulsion so foreign to the coldness of Uther’s nature that Myrddion could feel the heat in his master’s eyes from across the whole length of the hall. The king was entrapped in the woman’s face, a forbidden woman who would never smile upon him.
Myrddion swore with crude pungency and the ladies at his table drew away from him with distaste and shock. Apologising absently, the healer watched Ygerne’s eyes turn from Luka’s face and rise in response to the urgency of Uther’s stare.
She saw, she understood and, as all women do, she
knew
.
For a moment, the queen’s eyes widened with recognition,
and Myrddion saw a tremor run through her whole body and reach her hands, which clutched the table edge with white-knuckled panic.
She sees the lust of the king, Myrddion thought, his mouth parched with panic. What will she do?
The blush started at her throat and rose upwards in a delicate wave. Many women of pale complexion look blotchy when they flush, but Ygerne could colour and simply appear lovelier as the veins so close to the skin suffused her face with rose-petal pink. The queen’s eyes dropped to break the contact, unwittingly exposing the length and delicacy of her lashes so that, if possible, she was more beautiful than before. Pinned by the king’s stare, she sat like an effigy under the crazed intensity of his blue gaze, until Morgan whispered in her father’s ear, her eyes masked and hard.
Gorlois summed up the situation at a glance and would have risen to his feet had Llanwith not stamped forcibly on his foot, causing him to wince in pain. Ygerne turned to her husband, hung on his arm and whispered urgently into his ear. As the Dumnonii king bent to listen, his brows knitted together and his head shook in rejection, but Ygerne pressed herself against him and Myrddion could tell that she strained every muscle of her body to keep her husband seated.
With a quick word to her daughter, Ygerne rose and Morgan swathed her in a heavy cloak. With a deep bow to the High King’s table, both women moved swiftly from the feasting hall, while one of Gorlois’s guards followed in their wake.
The small scene had taken little more than a moment and most of the guests had been oblivious of the lightning-charged danger in the hall. Gorlois’s tanned face was pale and his eyes burned like coals in the linen-whiteness of his face, so that Myrddion rose and hurried towards their table. He was too late. Uther was standing up, and the room gradually became silent.
‘King Gorlois, your lovely queen leaves
our feast early. Why?’ The demand was harsh and Gorlois flinched. He swallowed audibly.
‘My Ygerne sometimes experiences sudden headaches which come upon her when she is over-excited. Your excellent food, your wine and your entertainment have been far too rich for a lady used to the quiet halls of Tintagel. She begs your pardon for any discourtesy, but my daughter, Morgan, will prepare a sleeping draught for her. Tomorrow, I am sure, she will be well again.’
Uther’s expression was impossible to read but the message in his words was crystal clear.
‘I shall depend upon it, Gorlois, have no fear.’
The High King’s mood for the remainder of the feast was sullen and introverted, although his guests enjoyed his bounty with gusto. The small incident that had caused Queen Ygerne and Morgan to flee from the hall had been noticed by very few except for those at the centre of the storm. The tables groaned with food and cups overflowed with wine, while laughter, music and shouts rose to the great oaken rafters like flocks of coloured birds. Among that gilded throng, Myrddion was sunk in gloom as he watched Uther’s face with a sick fascination. Against all reason, the High King refused to enjoy the luxury and opulence of his own feast, while his eyes watched the doorway that had swallowed Ygerne. Perhaps she would return!
Gorlois glowered, and all the combined jokes and sensible suggestions of Luka and Llanwith could not defuse his brooding, growing anger. The High King had stared at his queen as if he wished to devour her, and the Boar was insulted to his very soul.
Oblivious of the currents of anger, resentment and distrust that ran beneath the glittering feast, the crowd poured out into the forecourt at Uther’s command, leaving behind scattered bones and food scraps all over the tables and the marble floors. Uther’s dogs scented meat and began to scavenge among
the scraps once the crowd had deserted the hall for the Samhain fires.
With a murmur of wonder at the size of the structure, the crowd clustered around the base of the pyre in air so cold and crisp that their breath steamed. Then, while servants brought baskets of farewell gifts for the god of the old year, the lords and ladies stepped forward with sheaves of wheat, fruit, dried flowers and other symbols of renewal and hope.
‘How ironic,’ Llanwith whispered in Myrddion’s ear. ‘We celebrate rebirth but Uther is childless and like to remain so. When he eventually dies, whether in battle, by accident or even of old age, all this will be swept away in a tide of Saxon migration.’ His widespread arm encompassed the whole of the west, and Myrddion could feel the mourning in the Ordovice prince’s bear-like stance.
The healer raised one hand to rest it lightly on Llanwith’s forearm. ‘I will do everything I can to save our land, Llanwith. We will negotiate these dangerous roads safely if you can keep faith with me. Uther is not immortal, nor is he infallible. Anything but!’
‘Silence, Myrddion!’ Luka hissed from behind Myrddion’s back. ‘You speak treason, and the High King has taken the torch to light the fire.’
The healer felt oddly comforted by the closeness of good friends.
As Luka whispered his warning, Uther turned to face the assembled dignitaries. ‘Kings of the west, the old year dies and a new one struggles to be born. Although our enemies assail us, the gods are with us, for they carved these isles from the wild oceans in a time before time, and they will not leave our land to the mercy of harsh foreign deities. As you are aware, I have no wife to share my bed, bear my sons or light the solstice fire with me. As a soldier and the guardian of our borders, I have lacked the time or the leisure to court a woman. Yet the gods may relent and send me a wife. As I light this fire, I pray that they will stand beside us in the battles to come, and that they will
take pity on us poor, suffering and lonely mortals. Let the old year burn, and may the new year rise in glory from the ashes.’
Although he is rough and uncouth in most encounters, Uther has a gilded tongue when he wants to use it, Myrddion thought. But what does he mean by those words? Let the gods provide? Uther’s never looked to the gods for anything, and trusts only cold iron to speak for him.
Uther thrust his torch into each corner of the pyre as, all over Venta Belgarum, smaller fires were lit to welcome the maven, the god of the new year. The night sprang awake with a ruddy face, and the streets became alive with running citizens, wild dancing and the mad joy of celebration. Many children would be conceived on this night and no husband would argue the parentage, for the darkness was the prelude to a new dawn and a change that even the simplest citizen acknowledged as the Samhain fires roared, collapsed and sank into embers of russet, blood and gold.
Although he tried to bury himself in sensation; although he struggled to find some release in the soft breasts and warm thighs of Ruadh; although he tortured his mind with memories of Flavia and her hot, sweet mouth, Myrddion found his body was cold and unresponsive. With muttered apologies, he rolled away from Ruadh’s body as cold as a smooth block of stone. Yet fire burned in his belly as he felt the Mother run her fingers through his ribcage, along the twisted veins and arteries through which his blood pumped, until she lodged herself within the convoluted caverns of his brain.
‘She has come!’ he screamed aloud on the edge of sleep. Ruadh curled herself into a fetal ball and prayed for the first light of dawning.
Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.
Proverbs, 31:10
‘I must have her – the witch has ensorcelled
me and I can think of nothing else. I see her eyes whenever I sleep. Every woman I touch palls in my arms because she is not Ygerne. I must have Gorlois’s woman, whatever the cost – or I’ll go mad!’
Uther paced his bedchamber like a wild stag in rut, shaking his heavy head of hair as if carrying a crown of antlers that hungered to bury themselves in Gorlois’s broad chest. His hands clenched and unclenched, his eyes were frenzied and his appetite was gone, so that even the calm and reasonable Botha shivered at his master’s growing desperation.
‘He’s like to act in some crazed fashion to gain the woman, alienating all his allies in the process,’ Botha had whispered to Myrddion as they talked outside the king’s apartment. ‘He’ll not be deflected, Myrddion, for you know how our master thinks. He’ll not be satisfied until he possesses what he lusts after.’
‘And Gorlois will not sacrifice his wife for safety’s sake,’ Myrddion told the worried
captain. ‘Ygerne would kill herself before she’d allow Uther to touch her. Does Uther want her because she belongs to a man he envies or is it that she is an exceptionally beautiful woman? What a coil. I’ve tried to puzzle a way out of this mess, but there’s none that I can see.’
‘All you can do is your best, Healer. Uther has tried to approach Ygerne in the ladies’ bower, but she eludes him like a ghost. Her daughter inflames the situation further by sniping at him in her patronising fashion at every opportunity, but today the kings will meet and our master is on the brink of an explosion of rage. You know the symptoms as well as I do.’
‘Intimately!’ Myrddion snapped. He squared his shoulders and pushed the door open.
‘You’ve finally seen fit to join your king,’ Uther sneered, and paused in his rabid pacing as Myrddion entered his apartment. ‘How kind of you to find time to see me.’
Ignoring his sarcasm, Myrddion bowed deeply. ‘Are you unwell, my lord? Can I be of assistance?’
With a burst of dangerous energy, Uther rounded on the healer and prodded Myrddion on the chest with one forefinger to punctuate each sentence. It was only with the greatest difficulty that Myrddion refrained from backing away or, worse still, striking Uther’s hand away.
‘The meeting of the tribal kings is to be held within the hour. But at the moment I have no intelligence concerning their expected response to my instructions. Nor do I know what the Saxons are about. And Gorlois defies me by hiding his wife away from me. What do you propose to do about
that
? You’re supposed to be my adviser, so advise me.’